Laborers Quotes - Page 6

• I consider myself a laborer, building my career brick over brick under the sun.

  Shakira

  Careers, Sun, Bricks

  "'I Know What I Stand For'". Interview with Katie Couric, www.glamour.com. November 29, 2009.

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• Ah little recks the laborer,
  How near his work is holding him to God,
  The loving Laborer through space and time

  Walt Whitman

  Space, Littles, Time And Space

  Walt Whitman (2013). “Leaves of Grass”, p.315, Simon and Schuster

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• Coal lay in ledges under the ground since the Flood, until a laborer with pick and windlass brings it to the surface. We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Power, Civilization, Black

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.362

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• Whatever capital you divert to the support of a shiftless and good-for-nothing person is so much diverted from some other employment, and that means from somebody else. I would spend any conceivable amount of zeal and eloquence if I possessed it to try to make people grasp this idea. Capital is force. If it goes one way it cannot go another. If you give a loaf to a pauper you cannot give the same loaf to a laborer. Now this other man who would have got it but for the charitable sentiment which bestowed it on a worthless member of society is the Forgotten Man.

  William Graham Sumner

  Mean, Men, Ideas

  William Graham Sumner (1971). “Sumner today: selected essays of William Graham Sumner, with comments by American leaders”

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• A laborer might last ten years or so before expiring. But individual workers in the death camp of sugar were survived by their culture, which was constantly re-Africanized by fresh arrivals. To that plantation culture, the music of our hemisphere owes no small debt.

  Ned Sublette

  Years, Lasts, Culture

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• ...America didn't have to fight scarcity and we all felt guilty before people who still had to struggle for bread and freedom in the old way ... We weren't starving, we weren't bugged by the police, locked up in madhouses for our ideas, arrested, deported, slave laborers sent to die in concentration camps. We were spared the holocausts and nights of terror. With our advantages we should be formulating the new basic questions for mankind. But instead we sleep. Just sleep and sleep, and eat and play and fuss and sleep again.

  Saul Bellow

  Struggle, Sleep, Fighting

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• The American people have no idea they are paying the bill.  They know that someone is stealing their hubcaps, but they think it is the greedy businessman who raises prices or the selfish laborer who demands higher wages or the unworthy farmer who demands too much for his crop or the wealthy foreigner who bids up our prices.  They do not realize that these groups also are victimized by a monetary system which is constantly being eroded in value by and through the Federal Reserve System.

  G. Edward Griffin

  Selfish, Thinking, Ideas

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• No one can feel more gratefully the charm of noble scenery, or the refreshment of escape into the unspoiled solitudes of nature, than the laborer at some close in-door employment.

  Lucy Larcom

  Doors, Solitude, Employment

  Lucy Larcom (1875). “An Idyl of Work”, p.8

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• The teacher's chief difficulty is poverty. He (or she) belongs to a badly paid profession. He cannot dress and live like a workman, but he is sometimes paid as little as an unskilled laborer.

  Gilbert Highet

  Teacher, Dresses, Littles

  GILBERT HIGHET (1950). “THE ART OF TEACHING”

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• This life as a simple citizen and laborer has its benefits not only for the person himself but perhaps also for his country. After all, there is room for only one Prime Minister, but for those who make the desert bloom there is room for hundreds, thousands and even millions. And the destiny of the state is in the hands of the many rather than of a single individual. There are times when an individual feels he should do those things which only can and should be done by the many.

  David Ben-Gurion

  Country, Simple, Destiny

  "Why I Retired to the Desert". The New York Times Magazine, p. 47, March 28, 1954.

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• Whatever there is of greatness in the United States, or indeed in any other country, is due to labor. The laborer is the author of all greatness and wealth. Without labor there would be no government, no leading class, and nothing to preserve.

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Country, Greatness, Government

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• And just as there are no crimes so detestable that they can prevent the gift of grace, so too there can be no works so eminent that they are owed in condign [deserved] judgment that which is given freely. Would it not be a debasement of redemption in Christ’s blood, and would not God’s mercy be made secondary to human works, if justification, which is through grace, were owed in view of preceding merits, so that it were not the gift of a Donor, but the wages of a laborer?

  Prosper of Aquitaine

  Views, Blood, Grace

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• If each year slightly less capital is invested in industry, the time will eventually come when the amount of equipment per laborer and, in consequence, the productivity and the wages of labor are less than they otherwise would be.

  Sumner Slichter

  Money, Years, Would Be

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• American long for a closed society in which everything can be bought, where laborers are either hidden away or dressed up as nonhumans, so as not to be disconcerting. This place is called Disney World

  Adam Gopnik

  Long, World, Dressed Up

  Adam Gopnik (2000). “Paris to the Moon”, Random House Incorporated

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• The assumption of Jesus' program for his people on earth was that they would live their lives as his students and co-laborers.

  Dallas Willard

  Jesus, People, Earth

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• The real work of men was hunting meat. The invention of agriculture was a giant step in the wrong direction, leading to serfdom, cities, and empire. From a race of hunters, artists, warriors, and tamers of horses, we degraded ourselves to what we are now: clerks, functionaries, laborers, entertainers, processors of information.

  Edward Abbey

  Horse, Real, Warrior

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• I'm Method trained. How is this character like me? What does she think of her mother? What does her mother think of her? It's like construction, and then, yes, you hope you're talented and that the universe aligns and captures the kind of laborer's work you've done and whatever else sprinkles down on you, and it's all caught on film or onstage.

  Ellen Barkin

  Mother, Character, Thinking

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• The missionary church is a praying church. The history of missions is a history of prayer. Everything vital to the success of the world's evangelization hinges on prayer. Are thousands of missionaries and tens of thousands of native workers needed? Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He send forth laborers into His harvest.

  John Mott

  Christian, Prayer, Religion

  John Raleigh Mott (1905). “The Evangelization of the World in this Generation”

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• Woman has been the great unpaid laborer of the world.

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton

  World, Has Beens, Women's Rights

  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan Brownell Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Ida Husted Harper (1889). “History of woman suffrage”

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• A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour,
  Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within
  His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile,
  Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog
  Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade.
  Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws,
  No more sits listening by his den, but steals
  Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field,
  And crops its juicy-blossoms.

  William C. Bryant

  Dog, Sleep, Doors

  William Cullen Bryant, “Noon”

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• Take away from the courts, if it could be taken away, the power to issue injunctions in labor disputes, and it would create a privileged class among the laborers and save the lawless among their number from a most needful remedy available to all men for the protection of their business interests against unlawful invasion.... The secondary boycott is an instrument of tyranny, and ought not to be made legitimate.

  William Howard Taft

  Taken, Men, Class

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• The distance between capital and labor is not a great gulf over which is swung a Niagara suspension bridge; it is only a step, and the laborers here will cross over and become capitalists and the capitalists will cross over and become laborers. Would to God they would shake hands while they are crossing, these from one side, and those from the other side.

  Thomas De Witt Talmage

  Distance, Hands, Bridges

  Thomas De Witt Talmage (1886). “The Battle for Bread: A Series of Sermons Relating to Labor and Capital”

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• My ideal is that we all be economically interdependent. We should not be independent like millionaires, nor dependent like laborers. My ideal is that we all be interdependent.

  Rose Pastor Stokes

  Independent, Economics, Should

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• society has no qualms about a masseuse who is paid for touching people, or about laborers, or professional athletes or dancers, all of whom make a living with their bodies. Why should we make an exception for sex?

  Sydney Biddle Barrows

  Sex, Athlete, Qualms About

  Sydney Biddle Barrows, William Novak (1987). “Mayflower Madam: The Secret Life of Sydney Biddle Barrows”, Ivy Books

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• A fine lady; by which term I wish to express the result of that perfect education in taste and manner, down to every gesture, which heaven forbid that I, professing to be a poet, should undervalue. It is beautiful, and therefore I welcome it in the name of the author of all beauty. I value it so highly that I would fain see it extend not merely from Belgravia to the tradesman's villa, but thence, as I believe it one day will, to the laborer's hovel and the needlewoman's garret.

  Charles Kingsley

  Beautiful, Believe, Names

  Charles Kingsley (1862). “Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet: An Autobiograhpy”, p.117

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